in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses(verge article).they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.
for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.
so how can you help?
boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.
learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.
get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.
donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.
Captions: Hi, this is H. Jon Benjamin. I’m here to talk to you about a big problem on the internet. It’s called people emailing my wife. No! It’s called PragerU. Imagine a huge stream of lies that pours into every computer in America. Imagine it’s disguised to look unbiased and packaged into slick videos. And imagine oil billionaires give them tens of millions each year to indoctrinate your friends, your family. Well, that’s PragerU. And the thing is - it works. One out of every three Americans online has seen one of their videos and 70 percent say that Prager’s videos changed their minds. This stuff makes a difference. And every day, it is pulling people toward the right. At The Gravel Institute, we’re building something to beat them at their own game. Short, high-quality, easy to understand videos presenting leftist ideas and refuting right-wing lies. Stuff you can send to your friends, your mothers, your secret lovers, your mother’s lovers, your known lovers. Oh, and we’ve got big name presenters. From Bernie Sanders to Chelsea Manning. Here are a few that we’ve lined up [Cornel West, Slavoj Zizek, Richard Wolff, Stephanie Kelton, Nick Estes, Mike Gravel]. Okay, so this won’t be easy and we’re going against a Goliath. So we definitely need your help. We want this to be a collaborative organization, guided by its members, where we’re trying to do something big. So hey, let’s do this!
This is also probably a good place to bring up inoculation theory because that’s what a lot of these right-wing groups utilize. It’s most powerful against those who don’t have an opinion on a certain topic yet and it makes it harder to fight against whatever ideas they were fed.
Bob Belcher doesn’t want you, your family, your friends, to become a fascist.
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